Dweeb of Dweebs
Joe and Jane Popcorn don’t listen to film critics because they regard them as elitist, secular big-city monks who don’t speak to Joe and Jane where they live. I would dispute that notion when it comes to populist, “standing in the parking lot of a 7/11″ columnists like myself, but Joe and Jane may have a point. And it occured to me last night that the ultimate poster boy for elitist, secular big-city film critic culture has to be New Yorker critic Richard Brody.
I get what Brody’s more or less about and enjoy his peculiar passions. I love it when he writes about the exquisite influential stylings of Wes Anderson, and describes Ishtar as “one of the most original, audacious and inventive comedies of modern times,” and calls Carlos “the most potent neoconservative film yet to reach screens.” This is great passion, great eccentricity. But if Joe and Jane Popcorn were to took a look at Brody with his big wacko John Brown beard and read some of his opinions (which of course they wouldn’t), they’d go “who the hell is this guy?”
Brody obviously needs to keep on being Brody, but there’s no working critic, I would argue, who so fully conveys the idea of being a “visitor to a small planet.” No one in the field seems more indifferent to ground-level creeds, commonalities, beliefs and concepts of reality than ones that he alone has imagined and constructed for his own satisfaction. Brody’s appearance and words scream “I am so not a person who gets or cares about what even semi-average people are looking for they buy a movie ticket. I am a movie-nerd insect of the highest and most discriminating order, and immensely proud of this.”
Somewhere, in a dark broody lair, Richard Brody is writing the same about Jeff…
But we need elitists, without them there can be no Jane, John, Eloi etc.
‘I would dispute that notion when it comes to populist, “standing in the parking lot of a 7/11″ columnists like myself…’
Really? You really consider yourself a populist, Wells? I’m not trying to insult you — I actually *like* elitists, and prefer not to read critics who don’t consider themselves as such (“I never went to film school or read a book about the filmmaking process… I’m no snob! I love popcorn movies and sequels!”, etc.) Take Ebert — I think you can actually define him as a “people’s critic,” but his knowledge of film and film history is so vast, and his writing so fresh, that he’s an elite. And that’s a GOOD thing.
I’m just kind of amazed that you consider yourself a blue-collar, man of the people movie guy. You know, from, uh… reading and listening to you. Take PRIDE in your film snobbery, Wells. It makes you a better person.
(As for Richard Brody, I’m a longtime NY’er lover… and yet I never think of him as one of their film “critics.” You’ve got Denby (yay) and Lane (nay). That’s it!)
I am a little puzzled by this critique in that it seems to traffic in generalizations that don’t really work when closer inspected. The whole “average Joe/Jane” angle is just hollow. I think Brody is worth reading, engaging with, is an interesting critic, but I have many problems with his work, they just happen to not be of the “he doesn’t talk to the average Joe” type.
One of the issues I have with Richard Brody is that he often seems to value his opinion and position more than the ideas at play. He makes a pronouncement and inevitably defends it from detractors, or those he is in conversation with, or projected angles of difference, and it all becomes a comment on his original idea, the subject on hand being lost. What his criticism too often refers to is itself. Similarly he places far too much stock in his critical positions, seemingly writing for the sake of making his place known. I believe Mr. Kenny had a good quip on this just the other day on his twitter feed.
Not to mention the many many issues I had with his Godard book. Problems that are fundamental to the subject and to readings of films as well as what, to this reader, are issues of really poor scholarship (these issues align with the above paragraph, in which poor readings and disingenuous scholarship are secondary, or allowable and encouraged, so long as the original spark of an idea is defended in its entirety—even if they run contrary to the text being discussed). Others, Adrian Martin and B. Kite, for example, have far more eloquently pointed out the many problems with “Everything Is Cinema” and I highly recommend their reviews. Suffice to say, either willful or just wrong (and I think there is a mix of both) “E.i.C” is very problematic and at times ludicrously off base in its view/reading of Godard and his work and many of these issues stem from the concerns I have with Brody as a critic expressed above.
(Similarly, for all the typecasting of Brody as removed from “the people” in this post there is throughout the Godard book a shocking anti-academic current that drives much of the writing. An interesting conundrum.)
I don’t know if Brody qualifies as the elitist poster boy only because — and this is based on a casual reading of some of his work, nothing comprehensive — he doesn’t seem to have that disdain that looms large in the popular stereotype of The Snobby Critic. He seems to write more out of enthusiasm.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Joe and Jane Whoever will warm to him if he’s recommending some movie they’ve never heard of and don’t want to hear of. He may be a movie nerd and may get at some movie-nerd ideas, but if you look through his New Yorker blog, you’ll see him praising (or considering thoughtfully, rather than tearing down) plenty of mainstream figures, like Judd Apatow or Clint Eastwood, who I’m sure plenty of hardcore film nerds would find disdainful. Even his love of Wes Anderson: he wrote that essay for the Darjeeling Limited Criterion disc, and how many other hardcore snobs would go to bat for that movie? Some, maybe, but not all.
Maybe this is my own bias showing through, but I feel like the pointy-headed alien critic stereotype is better embodied by the Village Voice Film Studies approach where everything in every movie supposedly reflects who the president is when it was made and/or released. Or Dave Kehr, a great read and obviously an expert, who nonetheless writes about a lot of movies I’ve never heard of (which I like! But probably some casual readers would find annoying. Then again, are casual readers of film criticism even aware of hardcore film nerds, or do they read the Associated Press syndicated reviews, or maybe, if they’re lucky, Roger Ebert?).
You should take cue from him and use a current pic of yourself on your blog instead of an almost decade old vanity pic.
You know, since you’re a populist and all.
No, the narcissism and self-love is what makes him one of the eloi… Don’t change, JW!
Wells to Evelyn Roak: What’s hollow about Joe and Jane Popcorn? Are you saying…what, that there are no such animals? That the old idea of Joe Sixpack (i.e., Joe Popcorn’s cousin) is based on nothing? That the notion about most moviegoers just looking for some good old-fashioned escapism is an invention? I don’t know how to respond to you. Really, I’m stymied.
You are not a populist. You may think you are, but you are not.
Oh jeez, where did I say “Joe and Jane Popcorn” are hollow? The angle is hollow. What does setting up this contrast, between the secular-elitist critic and the Joe Popcorn (and don’t let them name their kid Burt) moviegoer accomplish? Is it really so simple? Is it truly a case of Jane just wanting what you say she wants? It is old hat, perpetuating a divide that isn’t really there. Further, have you really read Richard Brody (or is it just cause he writes for The New Yorker?)? He isn’t really the archetype you make him out to be. You are pitting two parodies against each other to what end? The only end I see is selling both sides short, crediting neither with what they actually do, are or think.
And to do all this under the guise that his beard might make ‘em get a big ol’ question mark above their heads? Talk about stymied. A) This is trafficking in absurd generalizations and is if anything shockingly condescending to your made up “Joe Popcorn” (“read some of their opinions, which of course they wouldn’t”) B) Granting to Richard Brody your own made up thoughts which seem to be as broad and generalized as possible, and have little to no relation to how he actually writes as a critic.
Brody is far from the image you have of him, as is this mythical Joe Popcorn. Frankly he sounds made up.
I may have voiced my issues with Brody’s work above but it is because he is a valuable and interesting critic that it is worth engaging with his ideas and questioning them when one takes issue. That is far more valuable and productive than the nth iteration of the snooty elitist vs. the man in the street, an angle that involves painting caricatures, insulting both sides and saying practically nothing.
Anyone been keeping up with the Brody/Glenn Kenny back-and-forth about mumblecore on Twitter?
“Anyone been keeping up with the Brody/Glenn Kenny back-and-forth about mumblecore on Twitter?”
A guy who looks like Father Zosima, the elderly Russian orthodox monk from the Brothers Karamazov, a guy who looks like he uses a quill pen because manual typewriters are too damn modern, this guy uses Twitter to banter with Glenn Kenny?
@ Nemo: I know. Weird, isn’t it. And yet true!
Fear the Beard!
Fear the Beard!
I defend elites, not elitism.
We need elites. No one wants an average surgeon, an average NBA player, or even an average film critic.
That said, no one likes a snob. No. One.
The trouble with elitism is in the argument from authority– “I am who am I am, thus I am correct and you are wrong.” No, you are right because you are correct because you are actually correct, not because of who you are, or where you went to school, or which title you have on your resume.
The difficulty in being an elite film critic is the same as in being an elite writer, elite painter, or an elite politician: there is no objective definition of success. Anyone can write, anyone can paint, and in a democracy, anyone can voice their opinion or run for office. That doesn’t mean that it will be done well, but there are no structural limitiations on participation in the field.
While we can judge a surgeon, or an engineer, or a basketball player by objective criteria, how do you measure the success of a film critic? Especially when, unlike understanding quantum mechanics, *anyone* can see a film for themselves, no matter how low their IQ or how middling their education.
The accessibility of film makes being a film critic an impossible job. The only way it means something is if a film critic is more educated than his or her audience. Problem is, the more educated one gets, the less inclined one is to spend time speaking to people in language they understand– rather spend it insulated among other “elites” in the echo chamber.
All the usual– and warranted– complaints about him aside, kudos to Roger Ebert for at least democratizing what was always a democratic institution. If anyone can see a film, anyone can have an opinion on it– Ebert took the time to not just his opinions, but *why* he held those opinions, in a language all moviegoers could appreciate.
P.S. The accessibility of erudite film critics to the general public isn’t aided when you look as if you smell like pee. Just sayin’.